The Gen

[Moggy]

Just how crazy is Pat Buchanan?
Pat Buchanan

Pretty goddamn crazy.

Despite his current position, as a friendly sparring partner with Rachel Maddow and in-house winger on MSNBC, the guy has been a very-thinly veiled fascist sympathizer for decades. And in his column this week, he all but removes that veil.

Available here, the column is titled “Did Hitler Want War?” Buchanan believes the answer to be no. He pins the blame for World War II on Poland, and Britain’s guarantee of protection to it. As evidence, Buchanan points to a string of inexplicably dumb decisions made by Hitler–so dumb that, to Buchanan, they negate the myths about the war and the man thought by nearly all sentient beings to be its instigator. Buchanan writes:

But if Hitler was out to conquer the world — Britain, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, South America, India, Asia, Australia — why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can’t get out of the Baltic Sea?

This is one of those instances in which the obvious answer is the correct answer: Hitler tried to conquer the world without the requisite equipment because he was a mad man who was also a pisspoor military strategist. Yet Buchanan would have it that Hitler’s ambitions of domination have been overstated; that, while he might not have been a peacenik, he did not want war. The Furher, you see, has gotten a bad rap from history >>>>

Ethan Porter
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Moggy
www.mogggy.org

[Moggy]

The above comment is a liberal journalist commenting on a right wing politician. Neither are serious historians. Neither of their views are correct, both seem to rely on mythologies of history than researched facts. "Hitler was a mad man" and a "piss-poor military strategist"will not do as an explanation of the outbreak of WWII. It is more complex than that.

As I have mentioned above, I believe it is quite clear that Hitler was not expecting a general conflagration to erupt out of his invasion of Poland. Ribbentrop had so advised him and he believed Ribbentrop.

AJP Taylor on this aspect of the outbreak of war is interesting. Taylor believed Hitler was essentially an opportunist. He certainly did have long term goals which he had set out in Mein Kampf He needed to dominate central and eastern Europe (which would involve settling matters with France, their ally) before taking on the USSR, but he relied on his sense of what was going on. He thought he could take Poland and get away with it. In the lack of allied military response after the defeat of Poland, and his "peace offer" it was plain he thought he still might. There were voices in Britain and France that might have let him.

However, Hitler made the best of the new situation which confronted him. The lack of military response from France fuelled a growing conviction that the French army (on which Britain so heavily relied to hold the line in Europe whilst the traditional British naval blockade was mounted and the British army mobilised trained and transported) was a paper tiger, and another push would secure his next aim, the neutralisation of France, after which he believed Britain would back off and let him get on with his schemes in the East.

Hitler's fatal mistake, was to turn on Russia without having finished off Britain. Stalin's brittle regime survived the shock of the onslaught of Barbarossa only just, with the supplies that Britain could send, and because Britain had intervened in the Balkans, messed up Mussolini's plans and caused Hitler to come to his rescue by taking Yugoslavia and Greece, thus causing a delay to the Barbarossa timetable which brought on the Russian winter before the 1941 aims were achieved.

If Hitler had listened to Admiral Raeder, adopted his Med/Blockade strategy, and reduced Britain before lurching into Russia, things might have been different. A study of the world situation in 1941 shows it was a damn close run thing.
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Moggy
www.mogggy.org

[Wudpecker]

[Moggy]

It's refreshing to see matters through other eyes - such as the one below
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Moggy
www.mogggy.org

[Moggy]

World War II: a 'just war'?

It has been 70 years since the outbreak of World War II.

Fighting began when thousands of German troops invaded Poland on 1 September 1939.

The conflict which ensued spread across the world, and by the time it ended in 1945, an estimated 50 million had died.

But the way in which the war is remembered varies around the world.

In Britain, it's generally seen as a righteous battle against the forces of totalitarianism.

In many of Britain's former colonies though, the picture is very different.

Professor Richard Overy from the University of Exeter and Prof Tapan RayChaudhuri, an expert on Indian History at Oxford University, discuss the different perspectives:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2009/09/090904_ww2_update_ap.shtml
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Moggy
www.mogggy.org

[Moggy]

Well, so far as the Indian Nationalists were concerned, it may have been a argument between one lot of colonial masters on the one hand and another potential colonial master on the other. The Indian National Congress may have been neutral, as the Republic of Ireland was, but you might have thought that their own common sense would have indicated that a world dominated by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan might be less helpful to their desire for independence, democracy, and the rule of law, than one in which the British Empire, gradually and inevitably chaging into a Commonwealth of independent states, maintained its position.

Unless of course anyone wanted to make out the argument, as some of course do, that there was no difference between British Imperialism and Nazi militarism. (See: non-historians, David Irving, etc etec)
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Moggy
www.mogggy.org

[Wudpecker]

One thing is shown by these interesting arguments and broad re-thinking of World War II on its 70th anniversary, its causes and possibly different outcomes.
History is not always written by the winners.
Or-to fudge that--history is not written by the winners alone.

Had the "other side" won, I seriously doubt any other version of history would have been allowed today. Look at Putin's Russian touchiness about any other view of Stalin and the Soviet Union suggesting it helped start the war.
That we can openly talk such heresy shows one good outcome to that war.
Not enough good to justify losing 50 million lives or more, granted. But an indicator of the freedoms gained by the loss of life and the eventual end to the Nazi regime and its brutal purposes.

Remember that today's world is also an outcome of the war. Are the results good or bad?
The general view is that is was "a just war". If so, whose justice? For whom?

That the 'black and brown' peoples might have hoped for Nazi successes in the early war days, as Professor Richard Overy from the University of Exeter and Prof. Tapan RayChaudhuri discussed, is no surprise. Any change in masters might be hoped for. Without really thinking through the consequences.

The 20th Century was marked by the Rise of the Masses, through Communism, labor movements, the Russian Revolution, and uprisings in China, India, and elsewhere. If I may, the Revolt of the American Colonies and their Constitutional government as well as the French Republic an hundred years earlier, was bearing international fruit.

If Hitler and his party had really treated people differently after taking over their countries, everything could have turned out in a new way. Central Europe might have become the equivalent of today's European union. And much sooner.
The invading German armies were welcomed as liberators at first. Especially in Eastern Europe (not including Poland). Even in Russia.
The conquerors soon made it clear they were not there to help anyone but Germans. Any chance Germany could have brought a new and wonderful world to the masses of the world was quickly shown to be a foolish idea.

Another mark of the 20th Century was the testing of racism and racial superiority theories. This racial thinking was widespread in the West, encouraged by slavery in many places over centuries. Britain was early in ending slavery in its dominions, by the way.

Rascism was a hallmark of Nazism as well. Not equality, but racial domination, was their goal. Slavery was implicit for the conquered, if not extermination. Hitler and his key Nazi's were Social Darwinists. Let the fittest survive. He held that to the end. Before he shot himself, Hitler is said to have put the blame for losing the war on the German armies and people as being inadequate and undeserving of victory, not himself.

Here, 70 years later, we have a completely different result.

Not everyone is happy about it, as the ferment behind the scenes in Barak Obama's U.S. presidency shows. But billions of people did get new recognition and dignity, and even food and economic development. Including professor RayChaudhuri's India.

I doubt any world run by the Nazi's would have brought an end to the racist colonial era and given people what we have today.

To paraphrase Winny:
Never have so many had so much provided by so few.